Ikenna

Hey there all 👋,

Just wanted to give an update on my health, Fluyo, channel and what’s coming next. I was actually planning to do a life update video on my YouTube channel in October, but I’ve now waited four weeks for a single good day where I feel strong enough to shoot the video, as it takes a lot out of me to record. Unfortunately, I haven’t had that good day yet, so I figured I’d write a text update instead - otherwise, it’ll likely be another few weeks before I feel well enough to record.

Warning: Very long post - but I do hope you’ll read it all. There’s something exciting toward the bottom after all the depressing bits.

Health 🏥
Firstly, thank you to everyone who’s reached out (also for birthday wishes in August). I’ve had quite a few people inquire about how I’ve been doing. Unfortunately, my condition hasn’t changed much since my body crashed very hard in July. I’ve been resting as much as possible these last few months to give my body a fighting chance to recover, but I’m still very much in that crash.

Basically, a crash for me looks like this:On top of being mostly bedridden and unable to walk, talk, or work much (my “normal” baseline symptoms), I alternate between being sleep-deprived for several days in a row or feverish. It’s a vicious cycle - my body eventually breaks from the sleep deprivation and becomes feverish, which ironically makes me sleep well for a bit, but I’m feverish the whole time. Then when the fever fades, I stop sleeping again. A pretty hellish loop. But that’s my dysfunctional nervous system for you.

My biggest focus has been working with my doctor (the same one from my Korean video) for a year now, trying to get insurance to cover a treatment that has the best chance of actually improving or curing my condition. After multiple rounds of appeals, road trips, and countless exams, I recently received the final rejection letter from our last appeal. That was devastating, to say the least. I might make a video about it next year when I feel better but I’m a bit at a loss on next steps.

I think part of me pushed myself to the limit these last two years (from Kickstarter to post-launch) with the thought that if I break my body giving my all to Fluyo, as long as I get the treatment and insurance covers it, I’ll recover quickly. Then Fluyo would be thriving, and I’d be healthy again. But the unfortunate reality is that I’m likely not going to get this treatment any time soon - it’s prohibitively expensive without insurance. Still, I’ll keep fighting alongside my doctor to find ways to convince them.

Fluyo 🐬
What I’ve learned is that to run a startup well, and for your team to execute on your vision. You, as the founder, need to be communicating regularly, verbally, and thoroughly.

At the beginning of Fluyo, even after I first got sick, I could still talk for hours and be very hands-on with a small team of 4–5. But after six years of gradually driving my body into the ground, I’m now lucky to be able to speak for 20 minutes at a time without worsening my symptoms (which usually triggers a mini fever that lasts for days). That’s simply not enough to lead a team effectively, no matter how much I delegate.

Now, while we are keeping a very small team on at Fluyo to maintain the app and ensure everything stays online, I also mentioned in a previous update that we had to pause new development. Previously, we had a team of around 15 people - but progress was incredibly slow, largely because my health was the bottleneck. It’s also very very expensive to pay salaries for that many people monthly, especially with low revenue (since I was too sick to do marketing), so we had to pause things in July/August.

Having to pause things and letting most people go was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I’d rather have pushed my body further than let people go, if doing so could’ve sustained the team financially. Those weeks were filled with emotionally charged, hour-long exit conversations, one after another which is likely why this current crash is so severe.

After the pause, I sent out an email in July saying that my hope was to rest and recover during August through September and that by October I hoped to be back in good enough shape to restart work on Fluyo, bring people back, and start populating the app with more content. But given how things are, that won’t be possible. At least not until a few months into the new year.

I'm really hoping I can start the rebuild by February but that date isn't concrete as my body is unpredictable and it’s quite worrying that I’m still in this crash after so long. I can't predict my body's progress anymore.

I feel gutted. My illness has robbed me of a lot, but to have a product and a vision that you care about so deeply (one you’ve sacrificed so much of your health for) stall at half of what it could be simply because you’re too physically weak to lead others toward your vision... that’s a special kind of pain.

That said, I know there are still many folks who use Fluyo daily, keeping their streaks alive and genuinely enjoying it. Still, despite our best efforts, I don’t think we yet have nearly enough content, fun, or solid learning mechanics. Personally, I find the app as is to be like a beautiful cake whose taste leaves a lot to be desired. It looks great but it’s lacking content big time and making significant changes requires A LOT of effort due to the complexity of the app.

What’s Next ⏩
So, as for my next steps… for the next few months, my top priority will remain my health. Even though I haven’t improved much yet, it’s made a massive difference not having to actively manage a company while being this sick. Not having to speak/record videos regularly and put out fires has given me a chance to truly rest for the first time in years, and as such I’m hopeful this crash will finally break soon.

Slowly but surely, I’m also going to be learning how to properly code - so that ideally, in a few months’ time when my crash does break, my coding ability will be good enough for me to dive into Fluyo’s codebase myself, get my hands dirty, and directly make changes, both to shape the app to my liking and to add new content quickly. From there I’ll need to market Fluyo more and start rebuilding the team.
That said, with my current level of coding knowledge and with how complex Fluyo is, if I went into the codebase today, I’d probably break a lot of things lol, and I likely wouldn’t have the strength or know-how to fix them yet. Hence, I’ve got to build up my (computer) language skills first.

It will be challenging however, I’m genuinely excited for one reason: in order to learn to code, you usually build a mini-project to practice and that’s exactly what I’m starting to do.

For the last month or so, I’ve been coding on average about 30 minutes a day (the most I can reliably do per day without worsening my health), and I’ve been building a small side project - essentially a mini-app.

Way back before Fluyo, there were actually two apps I wanted to build: Fluyo and another one. That other app wasn’t technically feasible back then, but with today’s AI coding tools, it is now - even by disabled me. It’s not super complex, but it’s pretty cool: it’s like a gamified speaking app with inbuilt SRS.

I’m building it for myself, because my Korean understanding has gotten really good, but my speaking is still… ass. I’m too sick to regularly speak with tutors at length on iTalki, so I needed a way to practice in short, fun 5–10-minute bursts with ample feedback / dopamine and this app does exactly that.

If you’re interested in testing it out, next month I’d like to invite some folks on Discord/YouTube to try it out. Ideally, it should support several languages. If you’d like to test it, you can email me at businessikenna@gmail.com, saying you’re interested, what language you’re learning, what level you’re at and what device you’re on (iOS or Android). I’ll reach out whenever it’s ready and select around 10–20 people max to test it, since it uses some AI it’s quite expensive to test so that’ll be initial limit.

Testing will be free, and when the app officially comes out (likely January, health-dependent), anyone with an active Fluyo subscription or anyone who backed the Kickstarter will get as big of a lifetime discount on it as I can give (at cost) to honor your support to this point. Though I understand anyone who wants to cancel or stop using Fluyo for now. My hope is that this mini app can serve as a bit of an appetizer for those who are waiting/want more content while Fluyo is paused. Fluyo is complex with 3d models, data structures I'm not familiar with, etc. and I feel bad I don't have the strength or knowledge to directly edit things without breaking it. So a smaller separate mini app is the best I can do for now🙏

t’s a really small project, but I think it’ll be really handy for a lot of people who struggle with speaking - which, honestly, is most folks (me included). It’s different from Fluyo, has its own vibe, but I’m able to quickly implement my vision for it and think it’ll be pretty cool.

It’s teaching me a lot about coding and full-stack engineering, which is needed if I’m going to tackle Fluyo’s codebase. And honestly, it’s nice because it gives me something to do within my health limit so I don't go crazy.

Continued in comments (1/2)

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3 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 1,126

Ikenna

What was the first video of mine you’ve ever watched, how did you discover my channel? 👀❓

8 months ago | [YT] | 79

Ikenna

Part 2 narrowing the playing field, which title would you be most likely to click on?

Thanks for voting!

9 months ago | [YT] | 33

Ikenna

Planning on doing a review/opinion video on Duolingo as they've been in the news a lot lately for many reasons.

Which title would you be most likely to click on?

9 months ago | [YT] | 43

Ikenna

FLUYO ROADMAP! 🐬 🗺️ This is going to be your deep-dive on everything we’ve got planned for Fluyo over the next year. This video walk you through our short-term plan to improve the app, the new features currently in the pipeline, and our long-term goals for the year. My Co-CEO Zack's video walkthrough: www.loom.com/share/2db198bd3b054e9da439112e33ef7bc…

A quick announcement first: we’re extending our $39 annual launch special until January 20. We’ve got a lot of improvements shipping for our Android app next week, and I want you all to have extra time to try those out.

The Full Text Version from Zack:


Short Term

All of these items will be rolled out over the next two months. Everything here is a sure-bet. Our team is already actively working on all of these items, if they aren’t already finished.


Bugfixes Everywhere!
​We’re working hard on implementing bugfixes throughout the app, especially Android. We’ve already shipped dozens of these. Many of you have already noticed improvements, and the app will only be getting better.

Android Blur Removed
​We’ll be removing background-blur from the app early this week. This should dramatically improve framerates for most users.

Improved matchmaking
​Our team is working on improving our matchmaking algorithms to make it easier to find matches in the game. Alongside this, we’ll be working on improving mini-game stability.

Language Data
​We’re working hard to improve language data issues as well. We have a Head of Languages starting this week who will be leading the charge on getting corrections rolled out as quickly as possible. Additionally, we’ll be publishing a toolkit that will let volunteers help us with language data corrections.

Improved Word Challenges​
We’ll be working hard to make Word Challenges less frustrating - accepting more synonyms and providing more consistency in which word forms we accept (infinitives, etc.)

More Wayfinder Lessons
​We’ll be rolling out the French beginner Wayfinder lessons, the remaining Korean beginner Wayfinder lessons, along with the Hangeul course, and our intermediate Wayfinder lessons for Japanese, Spanish, Korean, and French. These courses are written to 90%+ completion, and we’re already creating Audio for the Wayfinder lessons.

Premium Exclusives
​We’ll have exclusive premium item sets releasing every two months - the first, the Glacial Enigma set, should be available to all premium users next week.

Gem Items​
Our Gem-currency item sets will be dropping into the app very soon. Premium users and Kickstarter backers will be swimming in style.

Wayfinder Questions in Battles​
The questions you answer in Wayfinder lessons will soon be repeated as exercises in your creature battles. These will be appearing on a spaced-repetition system, so you’ll be getting detailed grammar review throughout your Journey.

Furigana and Transliteration Throughout the App
​Currently, furigana and transliterations only appear in limited places throughout the app. Very soon, you’ll see them both in creature battles and word lessons.

UI Improvements​
We’ll also be working on a wide array of UI improvements to make things more user-friendly and to improve quality-of-life inside the app. Here’s one example:

​

Medium Term

These items will be our focus 2-6 months from now. Most of them are planned, and many are in design or early development. Unlike the short-term items, these may change or priority may shift.


Creature Battle Improvements
​We’ll be balancing and tweaking creature battles as early as next week, but we’ll be looking for major improvements and adjustments to the format over the next several months. These changes will include recruiting creatures to battle alongside you, changes to the moves and format, and more.

Wayfinder Lesson Improvements
​Bugfixes for the Wayfinder lessons are already underway. For the lessons as a whole, we’re pretty happy with the format, but we’ll be working to make them more engaging and a little faster-paced. This will likely roll-out alongside a bigger change to the Journey format.

Extended Courses​
We’ll be working hard to roll out more Wayfinder lessons and matching Word lessons as quickly as we can for our core five languages.

Full Journey For All Languages
​Although Wayfinder lessons may take us more time, we’re aiming to have a Journey mode with Word lessons covering 3000 vocabulary words for all 10 of our launch languages (Japanese, Spanish, Korean, French, German, Chinese, Russian, Italian, Portuguese, and Dutch).

Pod Quests​
Pods will become a much more central part of the app as we begin to add Pod community quests and challenges where you’ll work together with your Podmates to unlock epic rewards.

Multiplayer Creature Battles
​Creature battles will be coming online. You’ll try to survive as long as you can against hordes of enemies, and work with your friends to take down epic bosses.

PvP Battles (1v1 Arena Returns)​
You’ll square off against other players in a fast-paced battle following the creature battle format to climb the ranks and become the ultimate 1v1 Arena champion.

Speak-to-Answer
​Sooner than later, we’ll be adding the option to speak-to-answer. As we refine our toolset for this, it will play a more prominent role throughout the app for users who want to use it.


Fluyo AI​
Fluyo’s AI tier will be launching with:

Personalized mistakes review
Extended audio lessons and personalized practice
Real-time social chat assistance
Personalized lessons and tutoring
Pronunciation and voice practice, models permitting
​


Long Term

These items are more like goals for the year, all slotting in at least six months from now. The priority on these items is likely to change significantly between now and development.


New Mini-game​
We’ll be adding at least one new mini-game to the app. We’ve set an internal goal to keep development focused on the game’s educational value. Don’t worry, it’ll still be fun though.

Wayfinder Lessons For All 10 Languages
​We’re aiming to have our first Wayfinder lessons for all 10 of our course in the app by the end of the year.

Community Courses
​We’ll be rolling out course-writing tools to the community to support courses we aren’t choosing to write courses for internally. These tools will be more-or-less the same as the tools we use internally, and we’ll have a volunteer program to help manage getting the courses created.

Begin First English Course​
We’re aiming to begin development on our first English course by the end of the year, but we don’t have an ETA for when it will make it into the app.

And Tons More!​
Our roadmap is constantly changing while we adapt to your feedback. We’ll be keeping you up to date periodically with announcements like this one.
​

That’s all for now! We’re unbelievably excited about the future of Fluyo, and we hope you are too. We’re on a mission to make our users fluent, and Fluyo will be the most fun and effective language learning app ever.

Zack Smith​
Co-CEO, Fluyo

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1 year ago (edited) | [YT] | 259

Ikenna

My Thoughts On Fluyo's Wild Launch 🐬

Today, I wanted to share my personal thoughts on how Fluyo’s launch went, because it has certainly been crazy, exciting, and definitely bumpy. First off, to everyone who has downloaded Fluyo, given it a try, or is actively using the app—thank you!

The Launch 🚀

This launch may have been the most nerve-wracking thing I’ve done in my life. Launching an app that I’ve poured my heart and soul into, through the ups and downs of both my health and finances, to the world is a big deal. It took five years to reach this moment.

To be fair, for the first two and a half years, I had my health but not much money to develop Fluyo (I could work a lot but we had the equivalent of 1 well paid engineer's salary to split across 8 people). Then, for the latter two and a half years, we finally had a lot more funds, but my health had collapsed from overwork - it's only finally starting to get a bit better now in 2025.

Honestly, I often think about had I never gotten sick, whether Fluyo would be in a stronger place today and just how much quicker we could have released it. But I don't like to dwell on those thoughts. Because life sometimes is the obstacles you face and not for one minute was I going to let my illness deter me from building out the dream that is Fluyo. The road here has been a struggle but it's been one that has given meaning to my life.

And I'm grateful because despite some of its current flaws or technical instability, to be seeing people already on Fluyo—loving it, using it, and even comparing our 15-person effort to apps built by teams of 500— is amazing and very promising. For those of you who are enjoying and learning a lot from Fluyo, I’m so excited and happy for you. I’ve been watching walkthrough videos of learners legitimately learning with Fluyo, and it warms my heart.

To see reviews on the App Store from people genuinely gaining value out of Fluyo is both incredible and humbling, and it certainly makes me feel like all the struggle has been worth it.

The Bugs 🪲

That said, as many of you know, the launch was pretty bumpy. First, we got locked out of our Apple account and had to delay the launch while waiting for their support. Then we aimed to launch on New Years to help users kick off their resolutions but iOS had another delay due to the holidays, and when we finally appeared on the App Store, we weren’t popping up in search results for “Fluyo.” 🤦🏽 Meanwhile, on Android, we sailed through approval, and while launch bugs were expected, we encountered a good amount more stability issues than anticipated.

Fortunately, our engineers are on the case and will be fixing most of these issues by the end of the month. We hear you loud in clear when it comes to performance / stability issues. Apparently, one of the main culprits for Android was—quite randomly—our new blurred background overlay! Ah, the joys of engineering. Again, many fixes are coming quick and we'll be expanding our engineering effort over the next months to majorly improve stability, optimization and UX.

The Future 🔮

This is only the beginning. Fluyo is not a one-and-done thing—I’m dedicating my life to it. We’re going to incorporate everything we’ve learned from this launch, as well as your feedback, to make Fluyo the best it can be. Whether that’s making the battles (especially at the beginning) easier so people can actually access the rest of the app, fixing screen size UX issues, language display data or building out highly requested features, we’re on it. I’m personally going through more or less every single piece of feedback I can find and adding it to my lengthy improvement list. (I can walkthrough the app with my eyes closed and list 100+ improvements in my head - not sure if this is healthy but it is my favorite activity before sleeping lol)

While it did take years to get here—and I / my health was the bottleneck for Fluyo for most of that time—we now have a very solid team in place to take charge. They’re going to implement all these improvements rapidly (without needing to wait on me), squash bugs, and really listen to our users in a way many large companies don’t. We’re small but extremely passionate, and we’re going to keep working on Fluyo until it becomes the best language learning app ever, as well as an incredibly effective tool for pure language learning.

Thank you all for your support. In a few days, Zack, my co-CEO, will be releasing an exciting video on Fluyo’s future (will likely post on our subreddit r/fluyo), addressing any outstanding issues or feature requests you might have. If you haven’t downloaded Fluyo yet, I encourage you to give it a try.

​Link to download on iOS​: apps.apple.com/us/app/fluyo-fun-language-lessons/i…

​Link to download on Android​: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fluyo

Also the fact that people are already comparing Fluyo to Duolingo at our nascent stage—and even saying they like it more—is just amazing. This (www.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/duolingo…) is where Duolingo started when they first launched, so we have lots of room to grow, and I’m so excited for what’s next. It what gets me up in the morning.

Thank you all.
​

P.S. Our 40% off for life launch deal is ending very shortly (in 2 days), so if you haven’t yet, I highly recommend grabbing your premium before the deal ends. Trust me, with how much work we'll be putting in to improve Fluyo over the next months, by the time that annual subscription renews in a year, you’ll be kicking yourself if you miss out on this massive discount now.

P.S.S. For any support related inquires if you have them please email - hello@fluyoapp.com or join our discord server here - discord.gg/jjJRYZ6cvF

1 year ago | [YT] | 536

Ikenna

If you've been missing the poylgot VRchat content on my channel, you should 100% check out‪@TigerinTranslation‬, he's an amazing creator who makes funny language VRchat content as well as great videos on language learning in general. :)

1 year ago | [YT] | 114

Ikenna

Update: Fluyo is live on Android! play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fluyo
iOS should be released tomorrow the 2nd!
Big Fluyo documentary video coming the 3rd.


Fluyo launches January 1st! - What happened?

Hey. I’ve got some good and bad news.

First, the bad news: While Fluyo has been cleared for publication on the Apple App store and the app is fully ready to go… Apple has thrown an account bug our way right before launch and left us out to dry until December 28th when the bug is set to resolve according to their support. (I wouldn't be surprised if that green owl had something to do with this...)

Unfortunately, that means we’ll have to delay launch. To be on the safe side and to avoid another delay, we’re setting full launch for January 1st. (we’ll announce exact launch hour later)

Speaking candidly, I was initially pretty devastated when I realized we wouldn’t launch on time. I literally happily cheered out “December 19th!” on YouTube and, given that Fluyo is 5 years in the making, to have the special launch date I planned not work out really sucks.

The good news: To make it up to you for this big delay, we’re cooking up something extra special for you on launch day. I’ll have more news for you soon, but trust me you’re going to be mindblown.

Also, to our Kickstarter backers - we’re still publishing the launch build to the beta app this week, so come give us your thoughts!

All that said, while the Apple issue is annoying (to put it lightly), the extra time just means that the app will be even more polished by launch and to be fair 1/1/2025 is a pretty cool day for a launch, especially with it being New Year’s


See you all on the app soon and I’ll keep you updated.

- Ikenna


P.s. The Apple issue is likely sorted and if not I’ll work super hard to make sure the 1st works, but if any further bugs appear we’ll let you know. That said if you can get us in touch with someone who works at apple HQ, send my Co-CEO Zack an email at zack@fluyoapp.com.


P.p.s. If you think you know what the launch day surprise is, reply to this post with your guess. If you’re right, we’ll give you a free month of Fluyo Premium!

1 year ago (edited) | [YT] | 1,391

Ikenna

wefunder.com/fluyo
Fluyo’s WeFunder campaign is off to a great start. 🚀 We're closing in on $400,000 raised. This is massive and is really going to help the company and our launch next month. If you also want to invest, now is the time. Remember in addition to certain in-apps perks this campaign is mainly about owning equity/shares of Fluyo. If you believe in our project and business potential this campaign is for you!

A massive thank you to everyone who has so far and everyone :)


——

Necessary disclaimer, although I actually don’t know if it’s still necessary anymore but I’m putting it anyways

We are 'testing the waters' to gauge investor interest in an offering under Regulation Crowdfunding. No money or other consideration is being solicited. If sent, it will not be accepted. No offer to buy securities will be accepted. No part of the purchase price will be received until a Form C is filed and only through Wefunder’s platform. Any indication of interest involves no obligation or commitment of any kind.

1 year ago (edited) | [YT] | 373

Ikenna

Some really great news: we’re set to launch Fluyo’s WeFunder campaign in less than a week on November 14th! 🐬 This will allow the community to be able to purchase shares of Fluyo before we officially launch to the world in mid-December. Typically, startups don’t let a large amount of individuals invest at such an early stage, but it’s important to me that our community has the chance to be part of this journey. That said, we’ve already got over 3,800 people interested in investing, and this round will likely be limited—so not everyone may be able to get in.

If this is something that interests you, here is the link to an investor interest form forms.gle/6diDLiTnvRXNEjUp9 that you should fill out ASAP. ✍️ 🔥 We’re going to be sending out emails today with more info on how exactly to pledge money to the campaign.

For everyone who was around for the Kickstarter campaign, you know that campaigns are crazy and super fun, and there should be some exclusive Fluyo perks as well. So definitely sign up as soon as possible!

A second bit of good news: I’m going to be doing a video to spread awareness about my illness. There’s a center for people with my condition and related conditions that just recently opened up, and I’m going to be going with my videographer to film behind the scenes and show myself doing a bunch of tests. I’m really excited for you guys to see a little bit more about my illness and to help people with related conditions know what tests are out there and what hope there is. 🎥

I’m really excited about both of these things. Thanks for the support and stay tuned :)

1 year ago | [YT] | 1,576